by Warren Gaston | Dec 30, 2020
During the candidates debate, the incumbent smiled like an angel, like an angel who forgot the first line of her auspicious announcement: “Be not afraid.” Her smile seduced me into thoughts of edible underwear, no durable substance, the fantasy of privilege and...
by Warren Gaston | Dec 28, 2020
As a number, I liked the year 2020. 2 zeroes, 2 twos Simple. The numbers added together making four. Simple. Four numbers, no ‘1’s, still 4. Simple. Half the numbers do nothing but hold place. Simple. I liked the pleasant curve of the digits ‘2’ and...
by Warren Gaston | Dec 23, 2020
I learned to eat oysters by overriding their gross appearance with mental force, willed my revulsed senses to stand down, then placed the gray globule in my mouth. I forgave, to my delight, the oyster’s sensory offenses and let the bivalve mollusk linger behind...
by Warren Gaston | Dec 21, 2020
There are places in this world where I have stood and looked. Not tourist places although I have seen: the Eiffel Tower, the Pantheon, the Parthenon, and La Sagrada Familia. In those places I was rushed, I was jostled, I had to get through. It was not the Grand Canyon...
by Warren Gaston | Dec 21, 2020
Typing long hours I relax my hands arms dangling fingers spread beside the chair I feel the cat’s smooth nose rubbed in my palm. Elgin, Illinois 1972 _______________________________________________________________________________________________ I was typing a...
by Warren Gaston | Dec 18, 2020
Like you, I mostly talk to myself, sensible in sunlight, weirder in moonlight, all day one long tête-à-tête one head with two voices, both of them mine. Surprisingly, I don’t know what these voices will say until they say it. You’d think I would know for obvious...
by Warren Gaston | Dec 15, 2020
It was raining in the city. It was too cold to be raining. Snow had been predicted, almost guaranteed. The temperature: fifteen degrees below freezing Fahrenheit. And it was raining, not snowing, in the city. The sky was hysterical, trying to sort itself out. Clouds...
by Warren Gaston | Dec 14, 2020
I want you to see for yourself. What does it look like? It is what it is. Draw your own conclusions. No explanation from me. You think more description would help. You want me to give you more clues. Twenty questions. Details. Color? Shape? Hot or cold? Is it...
by Warren Gaston | Dec 12, 2020
It was great, the morning, the east sun stark raving pink through the trees, and the night kittens, full of fresh electricity, batted the fern just brought into the house from the patio because of cold. The yard didn’t stay pink for long, the sun, climbed into the...
by Warren Gaston | Dec 10, 2020
To the dance . . . I was seventeen, and Sarah, sixteen, was willing to go with me, a drive through hard falling snow in the valley beneath mountains, wipers clearing an arced path through hoary darkness. A mountain of responsibility on my adolescent shoulders, life...
